People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist)

Vol. XXXVI

No. 50

December 16, 2012

THE UAPA BILL 2011

‘Drop
the Draconian Provisions’

Below is
the text of the speech given by CPI(M) MP Sk Saidul Haque
in the Lok Sabha on
November 30, 2012 while participating in the discussion on
the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Amendment Bill 2011 (UAPA)

THE
government
says that this Bill seeks to amend UAPA Act 1967 in orderto make it more
effective in preventing
unlawful activities and meet commitments under the Financial
Action Task Force
(FATF) regarding policies to combat money laundering and
terror financing.

The
Bill seeks to
amend the definition of a person, definition of property,
definition of
`terrorist act’ by including threats to economic security of
India and damages
to its monetary stability.

The
Bill enlarges
the scope of punishment for raising funds which will be used
or are likely to
be used for committing terrorist acts.The Bill seeks to increase the period for which an
association can
declared as unlawful from the present two years to five years.The Bill inserts new
sections to include
offences by companies, societies or trusts.The Bill also proposes to confer additional powers upon
the court to
provide for attachment or forfeiture of property equivalent to
counterfeit
Indian currency involved in the offence, and property
equivalent to the value
of the proceeds of terrorism involved in the offences.

Now,
my first
point is if the main objective of the Bill is to expand the
definition of
terrorist act to include acts that threaten the economic
security of India and
damage its monetary stability of production through smuggling
or circulation of
high quality counterfeit Indian currency, there are already a
number of laws
and Acts to do it. If needed, a separate Bill should be
brought specifically
dealing with this particular subject. But without doing so,including it in UAPA
Act would leave scope
for it being misused.

What
is our
experience with UAPA so far.The UAPA
was amended in 2004 by criminalising raising of funds for a
terrorist act. The
UAPA Act was further amended in 2008 by enlarging the scope of
the provision of
funds to ensure a broader coverage of the financing of
terrorism offences. The
2008 amendments practically brought back some of the draconian
provisions of
POTA that were made during the NDA regime.

As
a result of
these amendments, in many cases Muslim youth have become the
most vulnerable
targets.The
draconian provisions of
UAPA are being used to deny the normal processes of justice,
while there is no
time bound procedure for the judicial processes.

In
some cases,
these young men have been incarcerated for 10 to 14 years as
undertrials and
then finally acquitted by the courts as being innocent.Several reliable
groups of concerned citizens
and organisations, including Jamia Teachers Solidarity, who
have collected the
details of these cases, have revealed how the court judgements
themselves have
strongly indicted the investigation agencies for the biased
mentality against
the Muslim youth and for the manipulation and presentation of
concocted
evidence against innocent young men in several cases.Many of them were
arrested arbitrarily when
they were just eighteen or nineteen years of age, implicated
in dozens of
cases, incarcerated for over ten years and each of them was
held to be innocent
by the courts. This happened in Delhi, UP, Maharashtra,
J&K, Andhra Pradesh
and in other states also. I can provide the list of such
persons.

No
compensation
has been paid to them nor any rehabilitation done. Also no
punishment has been
given to the investigating officers who have concocted or
misrepresented the
evidence, for which these innocent youth were forced to spend
important years
of their lives in jail.The
government
has failed to ensure accountability of the guilty police and
intelligence
officials.

At
the time of
the passage of the 2008 amendment of the Act, our Party hadwarned of the
consequences of keeping many
provisions which were akin to the draconian TADA and POTA.
Experience has shown
the legitimacy of the apprehensions expressed at that time.

In
this backdrop,
the government has come out with more amendments to the Act
without reviewing
and reconsidering the draconian provisions that have already
been there in
UAPA. Review and reconsideration of UAPA is the urgent need of
the time.
Without doing so, such amendments willkeep open the possibility of misuse once again.

The
first
objection to the present Bill is about the definition of a
“person” which
include - (i) an individual (ii) a HUF (iii) a company (iv) a
firm (v) an
association of persons (vi) any agency, office or branch owned
and controlled
by any person falling within any of the preceding sub-clauses.

This
is a serious
thing.A person
means a person only and
the terminology should be restricted to its general usage in
criminal law.The
parliamentary standing committee has also
recommended to that effect.

At
the same time,
bringing an association of persons or body of individuals
under the definition
of a person will or may give leverage to the investigating
officers and could
lead to harassment.This
provision may
allow misuse of the Act because a person who may be completely
unaware of
theterrorist
activities done by other
person of that body or organisation, will be subject to
punishment or
harassment.

The
same
possibility is very much present where it is told about
raising funds. It is
proposed that ‘funds to be used or intended to be used for
aiding or supporting
terrorist activities’. Now, the question is by what mechanism
will it be proved
that the funds were intended to be used for terrorist
activities. Is there no
chance of misuse? This provision may even paralysestatutory bodies
which are supposed to
protect the rights of citizens like Human Rights Commission.

UAPA
has failed
to curb the problem of ‘Maoist’ menace or the terror
activities of militant
groups of North-Eastern states which have their own private
militias and raise
financial resources by extorting money from agencies of
development
projects.But
after the Mumbai attack on
26/11, the 2008 amendments were targeted at a particular
community of the
country.A
glaring aspect is the
provision for confiscation of movable or immovable property on
the basis of the
material evidence even where the trial cannot be concluded on
account of the
death of the accused in the proposed Bill. How can this be
right or just.

Hence
my
suggestion is that the government should defer passing the
Bill now until it
reviews, reconsiders and drops the draconian provisions of
UAPA.